” State legislators around the country have introduced more than 200 bills aiming to nullify regulations and laws coming out of Washington, D.C., as they look to rein in the federal government.

The legislative onslaught, which includes bills targeting federal restrictions on firearms, experimental treatments and hemp, reflects growing discord between the states and Washington, state officials say.

“ You have a choice,” said Kentucky state Rep. Diane St. Onge (R). “To sit back and not do anything or say anything and let overregulation continue — or you have the alternative choice to speak up about it and say, ‘We know what you are doing or intend to do and we do not think that it is constitutional and we as a state are not going to stand for it.’ ”

Last month, St. Onge introduced H.B. 13 to nullify federal gun control laws within Kentucky state lines. Similar legislation has been introduced in seven other states.

“ This law is saying the sheriff and those under him do not have to follow federal regulations,” she said.

Friction between the states and the federal government dates back to the nation’s earliest days. But there has been an explosion of bills in the last year, according to the Los Angeles-based Tenth Amendment Center, which advocates for the state use of nullification to tamp down on overzealous regulation.

“ People are becoming more and more concerned about the overreach of the federal government,” said center spokesman Mike Maharrey. “They feel the federal government is trying to do too much, it’s too big and it’s getting more and more in debt.” “

” An outbreak of mumps that began in September 2014 among students at the Moscow campus of the University of Idaho continues to spread outside the Moscow area. Idaho has 21 reported confirmed and probable cases, including six in the Boise area, as of Friday, Feb. 6. Two cases in Washington also are associated with this outbreak.

Mumps is a contagious virus that spreads from person-to-person via droplets of saliva or mucus from the mouth, nose, or throat of an infected person, usually when the person coughs, sneezes, or talks. An infected person can spread the virus before being sick. The virus is also spread when someone with mumps touches items or surfaces without washing their hands, and then someone else touches the same item or surface and rubs their mouth or nose.”

First the measles , now mumps … how is it that all of these virtually eradicated diseases from our childhood are reappearing in the age of Obama ?

This , from the comments says it all:

” John Gardner

February 8, 2015 at 8:33 pm

Geeze. Measles. Now mumps. Its almost like we’ve recently had an influx of unvaccinated people from overseas and deliberately spread them all over the country … Oh! Wait ….. never mind.”

The CDC has provided us with the answer to the above question and we are certain that it comes as no surprise to readers not blinded by political correctness . We quote from the CDC’s Measles FAQ page:

” Q: Has measles been eliminated from the United States?

A: Yes. In 2000, the United States declared that measles was eliminated from this country. The United States was able to eliminate measles because it has a highly effective measles vaccine, a strong vaccination program that achieves high vaccine coverage in children and a strong public health system for detecting and responding to measles cases and outbreaks.

Q: What does “measles elimination” mean?

A:Measles elimination is defined as the absence of continuous disease transmission for 12 months or more in a specific geographic area. Measles is no longer endemic (constantly present) in the United States.

Q: If measles is eliminated, why do people still get it in the United States?

A:Every year, measles is brought into the United States by unvaccinated travelers (Americans or foreign visitors) who get measles while they are in other countries. They can spread measles to other people who are not protected against measles, which sometimes leads to outbreaks. This can occur in communities with unvaccinated people.

Most people in the United States are protected against measles through vaccination, so measles cases in the U.S. are uncommon compared to the number of cases before a vaccine was available. Since 2000, when measles was declared eliminated from the U.S., the annual number of people reported to have measles ranged from a low of 37 people in 2004 to a high of 644 people in 2014. “

To us it is inconceivable that a massive influx of unscreened , unvaccinated illegal aliens does not play a significant role in the spread of infectious disease , especially when one takes note of the fact that these illnesses always seem to rear their heads in urban schools where the illegal population is highest .

Our leaders have nothing to fear though , there are damn few illegals attending their children’s fancy private schools .

” When you break it down, personality can be defined as a collection of distinct psychological traits which remain fairly constant over time and therefore shape the way we react to the world around us. These traits include extroversion/introversion (how sociable we are), neuroticism (the tendency towards negativity) and conscientiousness (which includes how cautious we are and how carefully we plan). We all know where we fall on these various scales and how it impacts our friendship circle, the way we perform our jobs and even how we cope with adversity — but can it actually affect our health?

In a recent study, Kavita Vadhara and colleagues correlated different personality traits with biological immune responses — that is, how geared up our body is to deal with threats to our immune system. And the results of their research led to some interesting insights into how personality type may affect our immune system.

The team asked 121 healthy students to complete personality questionnaires to assess, among other traits, extroversion, neuroticism and conscientiousness. They also took blood samples and from these they investigated the activity of 19 different genes involved in inflammatory immune response, as well as genes involved in defense against viruses. “

” A Florida man was arrested for smoking crack cocaine with his hospitalized friend, causing a small fire in an intensive care unit where the patient was located, police say.

Lee Vern Cook, 54, was arrested Christmas Eve on multiple charges, including arson, five counts of possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony.

Cook is accused of visiting a bed-ridden friend in the North Okaloosa Medical Center Intensive Care Unit, bringing with him crack cocaine, a pipe from which to smoke the drug and a firearm. The two smoked the cocaine together from a homemade device, police say, but the patient wore an oxygen mask and the flame from lighting the pipe mixed with the gas to rapidly cause a fire.”

” One in three Americans say they have put off getting medical treatment that they or their family members need because of cost. Although this percentage is in line with the roughly 30% figures seen in recent years, it is among the highest readings in the 14-year history of Gallup asking the question.

Since 2001, Gallup has asked Americans each November if they have put off any sort of medical treatment for themselves or their families in the past 12 months. Last year, many hoped that the opening of the government healthcare exchanges and the resulting increase in the number of Americans with health insurance would enable more people to seek medical treatment. But, despite a drop in the uninsured rate, a slightly higher percentage of Americans than in previous years report having put off medical treatment, suggesting that the Affordable Care Act has not immediately affected this measure. “

” Stroke is a leading cause of death in the U.S., killing 130,000 Americans each year — one of every 19 deaths, federal statistics show. One reason: Conventional treatments involving clot-busting drugs are only effective when given within three hours of a stroke’s onset, so most sufferers never make it to the hospital in time.

But a revolutionary new procedure is giving stroke victims new hope and help, as Newsmax TV’s “Meet The Doctors” reports this week.” It’s called a thrombectomy, and the procedure essentially involves vacuuming out blood clots that form in the brain causing strokes, blocking blood flow and leading to disability and death.

Imran Chaudry. M.D., with the Medical University of South Carolina Medical Center, explains that with a thrombectomy, patients can benefit even 12 hours after suffering a stroke, and perhaps longer. Although the procedure is still considered experimental, studies are underway to refine the technique and establish its safety and effectiveness — research that could lead the Food and Drug Administration to approve it as a front-line stroke therapy. “

” A Canadian mother is stuck with a $1 million hospital bill after she gave birth prematurely while on vacation in the U.S. last year.

Jennifer Huculak-Kimmel, at six months pregnant, thought she and husband Darren had taken all the right steps before taking a trip to Hawaii. She got approval from her doctor and even purchased travel insurance from Blue Cross, the Toronto Sun reported.

But her water broke while she was on vacation, leading to an emergency C-section and a lengthy hospital stay for the couple’s premature daughter, Reece.

” Blue Cross said that because I had a bladder infection at four months and hemorrhaged because of that, that they would not cover the pregnancy,” Huculak-Kimmel said. “We thought we had done everything right. We thought we had covered all avenues and we thought we were covered. We thought we were safe to go.”

The hospital bill added up to about $950,000, including $40,000 for medical evacuation to a Honolulu hospital; $160,000 for Huculak-Kimmel’s hospital stay; and $750,000 for the care of the baby in a neonatal intensive care unit. Saskatchewan Health paid about $20,000 of the bill and the United States paid $12,000, leaving the couple with a staggering $918,000 bill.”

This is the Canadian healthcare system that we are supposed to aspire to ?

” Over 214,000 doctors won’t participate in the new plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA,) analysis of a new survey by Medical Group Management Association shows. That number of 214,524, estimated by American Action Forum, is through May 2014, but appears to be growing due to plans that force doctors to take on burdensome costs. It’s also about a quarter of the total number of 893,851 active professional physicians reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

In January, an estimated 70% of California’s physicians were not participating in Covered California plans.

Here are some of the reasons why:

1. Reimbursements under Obamacare are at bottom-dollar – they are even lower than Medicare reimbursements, which are already significantly below market rates. “It is estimated that where private plans pay $1.00 for a service, Medicare pays $0.80, and ACA exchange plans are now paying about $0.60,” a study by the think-tank American Action Forum finds. “For example, Covered California plans are setting their plan fee schedules in line with that of Medi-Cal-California’s Medicaid Program-which means exchange plans are cutting provider reimbursement byup to 40 percent.” “

” Democrats looking to blame Republicans for the lack of an Ebola vaccine may owe Dick Cheney an apology.

It turns out that as vice president, Cheney was the driving force behind more funding for the National Institutes of Health that helped lead to the development of Ebola vaccines being tested today.

From the time scientists first discovered the deadly virus in 1976 to 2012, two dozen outbreaks of Ebola claimed the lives of roughly 1,500 people–far less than the nearly 5,000 killed in the current outbreak in West Africa.

Bloomberg News reports that little money had been available to scientists to work on finding a cure to the disease. But after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Cheney, anticipating the potential for bioterrorist attacks, became the Bush White House’s point man advocating more spending to protect the nation from deadly pathogens.

It has ramifications when the source of the problem you’re dealing with is something like an outbreak of Ebola, but our prime motivation was to make certain we were prepared to deal with an attempt to use those substances in an attack. “

Since 2001, the National Institutes of Health’s budget to study biodefense measures has increased from $53 million to $1.6 billion. “

” A man who was completely paralyzed from the waist down can walk again after a British-funded surgical breakthrough which offers hope to millions of people who are disabled by spinal cord injuries.

Polish surgeons used nerve-supporting cells from the nose of Darek Fidyka, a Bulgarian man who was injured four years ago, to provide pathways along which the broken tissue was able to grow.

The 38-year-old, who is believed to be the first person in the world to recover from complete severing of the spinal nerves, can now walk with a frame and has been able to resume an independent life, even to the extent of driving a car, while sensation has returned to his lower limbs.

Professor Geoffrey Raisman, whose team at University College London’s institute of neurology discovered the technique, said: “We believe that this procedure is the breakthrough which, as it is further developed, will result in a historic change in the currently hopeless outlook for people disabled by spinal cord injury.”

The surgery was performed by a Polish team led by one of the world’s top spinal repair experts, Dr Pawel Tabakow, from Wroclaw Medical University, and involved transplanting olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) from the nose to the spinal cord.”

” We have technology to potentially control Ebola and other viral outbreaks today. But the federal bureaucracy refuses to catch up with 21st-century science.

For example, diagnostic startup Nanobiosym has an iPhone-sized device that can accurately detect Ebola and other infectious diseases in less than an hour.

Two other companies, Synthetic Genomics and Novartis, have the capacity to create synthetic vaccine viruses for influenza and other infectious diseases in only four days. Both firms can also share data about outbreaks instantaneously and make real-time, geographically specific diagnosis and vaccine production possible.

These companies could start producing Ebola vaccine/treatments tomorrow — except that the Food and Drug Administration’s insistence on randomized studies and endless demands for more data means firms have to spend millions on paperwork instead of producing medicines.

And for every small company drained by such tactics, many others conclude it’s not even worth trying.

These advances aren’t available because the FDA is using 19th-century science to decide which medical technologies should be used in the 21st century. “

” The announcement of Ron Klain as the new Ebola “czar” checks all the boxes: Harvard Law, longtime Democrat party op, veteran of the Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry campaigns. The problem is, it checks all the wrong boxes. The Progressive myth is that we ought to have a government of experts — top men! — to handle the nation’s problems in a calm, deliberative manner. The reality is that we have a nation of unscrupulous lawyers, amoral apparatchiks and political hacks whose only area of expertise is manipulating the electoral and governmental systems and getting rich by doing so.

I mean, does this make you feel confident?

After learning this week that an infected nurse had traveled by air, Mr. Obama scrapped most of his schedule in favor of meetings with top national security and public health officials. While praising their work to date on Ebola, the president said they had full plates — including the fight against the Islamic State and the onset of flu season — and another person might be needed “just to make sure that we are crossing all the t’s and dotting all the i’s going forward.”

Islamic State, the flu season, a lethal virus hitherto confined to Africa — just another day at the office for President Golf n’ Fund-raise. What this appointment — made only under duress, and purely for political reasons, since there is absolutely nothing Ron Klain personally can do to stop the spread of the Ebola virus now that the barn doors at our borders and airports have been left wide open for ideological reasons — tells us is this: “

Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said during a telephone press briefing Wednesday that you cannot get Ebola by sitting next to someone on a bus, but that infected or exposed persons should not ride public transportation because they could transmit the disease to someone else.

Gotcha. You can’t get Ebola on a bus or a plane, you can only give it. Good to know. Thanks, Doc.

The Centers for Disease Control is one of those elite federal agencies that people hitherto assumed was, so to speak, immune to the pathologies of less glamorous government bureaucracies. It turns out it’s the DMV with test tubes – just the usual “Sorry? Did we say you need two copies of the green form? We meant you need three copies of the pink form” routine with extra lethality. The Protocols of the Elders of Druid Hills have proved to be boundlessly mutable and mostly honored in the breach:

~Don’t worry, the Protocols are in place – except that Thomas Duncan, the original Ebola patient, was left in an open area of the Dallas emergency room for hours and the medical staff treating him did not have protective clothing for the first two days.

~Don’t worry, they did eventually get fully sealed, protective clothing – well, except for their necks, which remained exposed.

~Well, okay, but that was totally in breach of the Protocols – except that Nurse Vinson called the CDC to check and they said, “Sure, get on the plane. What’s the worst that can happen? And make sure you share the bag of mini-pretzels…”

” The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has spent more than $39 million on obese lesbians, origami condoms, texting drunks, and dozens of other projects that could have been scrapped in favor of developing an Ebola vaccine.

“ Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready,” said NIH Director Francis Collins, blaming budget cuts for his agency’s failure to develop a vaccine for the deadly virus.

However, the Washington Free Beacon has uncovered $39,643,352 worth of NIH studies within the past several years that have gone to questionable research.

For instance, the agency has spent $2,873,440 trying to figure out why lesbians are obese, and $466,642 on why fat girls have a tough time getting dates. Another $2,075,611 was spent encouraging old people to join choirs.

Millions have gone to “text message interventions,” including a study where researchers sent texts to drunks at the bar to try to get them to stop drinking. The project received an additional grant this year, for a total of $674,590.

Sexual minorities have received a substantial amount from the NIH. The agency has now spent $105,066 following 16 schizophrenic LGBT Canadians around Toronto for a study on their community experiences.

The total for a project on why gay men get syphilis in Peru is now $692,697 after receiving additional $228,425 this year. The NIH is also concerned about postpartum depression in “invisible sexual minority women,” with a study that has cost $718,770.

Millions went to develop “origami condoms,” in male, female, and anal versions. The inventor Danny Resnic, who received $2,466,482 from the NIH, has been accused of massive fraud for using grant money for full-body plastic surgery in Costa Rica and parties at the Playboy mansion.

How transwomen use Facebook is the subject of another NIH study worth $194,788.

Yale University is studying how to get “Heavy Drinkers” to stop smoking at a cost of $571,799. Other projects seek to use Twitter to provide “social support to smokers” ($659,469), and yoga ($1,763,048) as a way to quit.

On Tuesday, Health and Human Services (HHS) had to outsource efforts at an Ebola vaccine to the Baltimore-based Profectus BioSciences Inc. The company will receive $8.6 million to research and test their vaccine, a fraction of NIH funding that went to the above projects. “

” The military is using an Ebola screening machine that could have diagnosed the Ebola cases in Texas far faster, but government guidelines prevent hospitals from using it to actually screen for Ebola.

It’s a toaster-sized box called Film Array, produced by a company called BioFire, a subsidiary of bioMérieux and it’s capable of detecting Ebola with a high degree of confidence — in under an hour.

Incredibly, it was present at Dallas Presbyterian Hospital when Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan walked through the door, complaining of fever and he had just come from Liberia. Duncan was sent home, but even still,FDA guidelines prohibited the hospital from using the machine to screen for Ebola.

The Film Array retails for about $39,000 per unit and can screen for the genetic markers of a wide number of respiratory, gastro-intestinal and other illness, including Ebola, but only with the right “kit” in place. Current FDA guidelines would not have allowed Dallas Presbyterian Hospital to get that kit. That’s despite the fact that it can provide results with higher than 90 percent certainty and it’s one of the machines that the military is currently using to screen for Ebola in Africa. “

” A Dallas health care worker who handled clinical specimens from an Ebola-infected patient is on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, with the worker self-quarantined and being monitored for signs of infection, the State Department said in a statement.

The unidentified female worker departed on a cruise ship from Galveston, Texas, Oct. 12 and was out of the country before being notified of active monitoring required by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to the government statement.

The monitoring was established as two nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, tested positive for Ebola.

The hospital worker on the Carnival Magic cruise ship did not have direct contact with patient Thomas Eric Duncan, but may have had contact with his clinical specimens, authorities said. The employee, who has not been publicly identified, has not had a fever or demonstrated any symptoms of illness, authorities said.

“ The worker has voluntarily remained in the cabin and the State Department and cruise line are working to bring the worker back to the U.S. out of an abundance of caution,” the Department of State said in the release.”

” A passenger died on a Nigeria-to-JFK flight after a vomiting fit Thursday — and a top lawmaker said officials gave the corpse only a “cursory” exam before declaring that the victim did not haveEbola.

Rep. Peter King said in a letter to Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection that the handling of the remains exposed serious flaws in airport preparedness for an Ebola outbreak.”

” Between 70 and 100 passengers a day arrive at JFK from the Ebola epicenter countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, King noted, and they have access to public restrooms and mingle with other travelers before their first screening. “

” 10-14-14 – ( Fox News – The Kelly File ) – CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden faced off with Megyn Kelly tonight over how the agency is dealing with cases of Ebola in the United States. Kelly even brought up calls by her colleagues, including Bill O’Reilly, for him to resign for his mishandling of the situation. Frieden kept assuring that despite a smattering of cases in the U.S., the CDC is doing everything it can to make sure contact with others is minimal and hospitals have the tools they need to treat. Kelly confronted him with past assurances that Ebola would be stopped in its tracks and wouldn’t be coming to the United States.

She pressed him on why the U.S. doesn’t just implement a travel ban. Frieden argued they’ve done enough by recommending all non-essential travel to West Africa be stopped for Americans, as well as stepping up airport screenings, but he doesn’t want to “isolate these countries” because it will “make it harder to stop the epidemic here.”

Kelly kept pushing him on hospitals not being fully equipped to treat Ebola before bringing up O’Reilly’s mad-as-hell call for Frieden to resign. Frieden basically dismissed those calls and insisted, “I’m focused on protecting Americans 24/7.” “

” A second health care worker at a Dallas hospital who provided care for the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the U.S. has tested positive for the disease, the Texas Department of State Health Services said Wednesday.

The department said in a statement that the worker reported a fever Tuesday and was immediately isolated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. Health officials said the worker was among those who took care of Thomas Eric Duncan, who was diagnosed with Ebola after coming to the U.S. from Liberia. Duncan died Oct. 8.

The department said a preliminary Ebola test was conducted late Tuesday at a state public health laboratory in Austin, Texas, and came back positive during the night. Confirmatory testing was being conducted at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

The statement said the health care worker, who wasn’t identified, was interviewed to quickly identify any contacts or potential exposures. It said others who had interactions with the worker or possible exposure to the virus will be monitored. “